


Six Things About Zacharias Smith

by CC_Bean



Series: All Things Zacharias Smith [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 15:52:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6201490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC_Bean/pseuds/CC_Bean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zacharias Hunter Smith. Famous for his superb quidditch skills, running from the battle at Hogwarts, and complete lack of interest in other human beings. Not famous for his conversation skills, Hufflepuff kindness, or knowing when to keep his mouth shut.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Things About Zacharias Smith

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something I wrote about my favorite hufflepuff Zacharias Smith who I love to pieces. Some of the topics mentioned will be fleshed out in more detail in other oneshots I plan on writing about him (maybe I'll start a Zacharias Smith series on here). Let me know what you think, I've written a fair amount of fanfic but this is my first post to AO3. :)

**Zacharias Smith is a Hufflepuff.** Most would say he’s not a  _ typical _  Hufflepuff, and yeah, some people think he’s a jerk or a nay-sayer, but in reality he just doesn’t follow the crowd. He doesn’t follow blindly just because everyone else does and when he speaks up (which he always does) it must be because he’s against them, or he’s a bad guy, or he’s just plain stupid.

Zacharias Smith gets a bad name because he made the big mistake of not following the chosen one quietly and without question. He spoke out, asked a question, had doubts about Harry Potter-their savoir. How  _ dare _  he. He had spoiled his name in a matter of seconds.

Zacharias Smith pushed first years out of the way getting out of the school. Not his finest moment he’ll be the first to admit. He didn’t really know he had done it until Susan told him later, asking what the hell he had been thinking. She didn’t blame him for leaving, no, not at all. She wasn’t small minded enough to think every 17 year old boy would run into the war, look death in the face and not even falter but “at least takes the first years  _ with _  you”. Zach agrees, so you can imagine his surprise when she said _he_  had done those things. He wasn’t a saint and yeah sometimes he could be a negative nancy but he wasn’t  _ awful _  and he sure as hell wasn’t selfish.

_ At least he didn’t think he was. _ He didn’t _think_ he was selfish or a coward, but I guess a war brings out things in you you never thought were there. Besides, if enough people are sneering at you, calling you a coward you’ll start to believe it. But then again since when did deciding not to fight in the biggest war in history, a war that was bigger than you and everyone else, deciding to go home to your dad (because one parent already left and you can’t be an orphan) make you a coward? Since when?  Since  _ they _  said it does.

**Zacharias Smith is bitter.**  He really doesn’t remember pushing those first years to the side. He doesn’t remember anything really except the pounding in his ears and apparating to his house-splinched. The rest is kind of fuzzy. Zacharias Smith has  _ years _  that are fuzzy because of the one thing he  _ can _  remember, and the one thing he wants to forget-Cedric. Rather, Cedrics dead body popping back up and that moment of terror when Cedics fathers yell cuts through him. He can’t tell you every moment of that day when Hogwarts was officially visited by the Dark Lord just three years ago, but he could describe to you in detail every second of that night when he was fourteen. And he’s bitter.  Oh is he bitter _. _

Cedric was the brother he  _ did _  have, the one who may not have shared his blood but for a long time there was no one closer to him than Cedric. He helped him practice for quidditch and Zacharias knows he wouldn’t have made it professionally if it hadn't been for Cedric. They were pretty different, minus their love of the wizard sport, but Cedric took him under his wing. They were best friends-they were _brothers_ .  And then he died.

Some say he blames Harry Potter, and they’re not _completely_  wrong. He knows (somewhere down deep where reason and logic reside) that it’s not really Potters fault but Cedric’s gone and he needed someone to blame. Besides, it’s hard to shake the first thing you think (the first thing you  _ feel _ ) when you see your dead friend and you’re just fourteen and puberty was hard enough. Hes tried, hes really  _ tried _  (because who wants to carry around that much anger in them for the rest of their lives) but it’s had years to fester and grief is never easy and it’s been taking him through the wringer.

**Zacharias Smith is loud** . He says what he thinks and more than once it’s gotten him into trouble. He doesn’t believe in shrinking around others because of their status, or wealth or whatever it may be. He’s not shy. That’s how Susan knew he was _not_ __ making it when he barely said a word all of 5th and 6th year. His silence was terrifying to the house that had grown up with him, to students who remember a time when they’d tell him to just _shut up_  because he could go on and on. Now, the first time they hear him  _ really _  laugh (three years after Cedric, one year after the war when they all went back for another year because where else would they go?) it’s like they  _ all _  start to breathe again.

**Zacharias Smith is dyslexic.** For longer than he’d care to admit Zacharias was unaware that other students didn’t have to rearrange the letters that were shuffling out of order when they read. His child mind just thought that was a part of reading. He never paid attention to when everyone but him would laugh at something someone had said. He didn’t think much of it when Susan almost threw out his notes because his handwriting looked like he had simply been trying out a new quill. He didn’t think it was that odd that he would mess up his right and left because everyone did that sometimes right? It wasn’t until the middle of first year when Professor Sprout took him to Madam Pomfrey and said that they needed to have a “discussion” about something called dyslexia that Zacharias realized maybe something  _ was _  different about him after all. By the end of said discussion, he wished they had just left it alone because now he knew that other kids didn’t have to play a complicated game of unscramble (which he normally lost) when they opened the textbook. He knew that apparently he could struggle with “non-literal” language and those times people would laugh were because they were joking and those jokes would go right over his head. Now he knew that to everyone else his handwriting apparently  _ did _  look like someone gave a one year old a fresh set of quills and ink and let them have at it. Now he knew that no, people did  _ not  _ mix up their left and right-and least not as often as he did. Now he knew he was different and different meant stupid. At least, that’s what eleven year old Zacharias thought it meant, and it took a long time before he believed anything different. 

**Zacharias Smith is a half blood.**  Pretty much everyone assumes he’s a pureblood and he doesn’t tell them anything different. To be honest he doesn’t know whether he would lie or not if someone happened to ask him about it upfront and when he thinks about that-it scares him. He doesn’t think being “pure” is necessarily better, he doesn’t think anyone who isn’t a pureblood is below anybody else. He just doesn’t want to remember the woman who turned and ran because her son was like his father-a freak. That’s what happens when maybe a man can choose to live in her world and live a muggle life but there’s nothing to be done when their son also turns out to be one of _those_. Nothing to be done when a kid can't help that strange things seem to keep happening and suddenly it’s all too much and on a quiet day at home a mother just leaves the house and never comes back.

Zacharias Smith doesn’t want to remember-but he finds it hard to forget when you’re just a little kid and you see other families and you wonder where  _ your _  mommy is. It’s hard to forget when your father sits you down to explain just exactly where your mother is (not that Mr.Smith  _ knows _  where she is but Zach guesses the point is that she’s certainly not with _them_ -not anymore). So yeah, he lets everyone believe he’s a pureblood because he’s had nothing but bad experiences with the muggle world and he’d much rather pretend it has nothing to do with him. He’s fine, really (even though Susan will get frustrated and tell him that denying who you are doesn’t mean you’re fine). Naturally he disagrees with her  but then he’ll see a little witch with her mom and dad who stick out like sore thumbs as they usher their daughter on the train for her first year at a special school. He starts thinking Susan is right when his blood curls and his wand sparks when he sees that naive little girl wave from the window and she doesn't even think of how lucky she is. He  _ knows _  Susan is right when his chest gets tight because those little girls parents are both ordinary, they’re both muggles, and they both _stayed_ _.  _ And it’s in moments like those that make Zacharias Smith realize  he’s not fine .

**Zacharias Smith is a quidditch player** . He’s always wanted to fly. He got decent(?) marks in school, but there was never a subject that  _ called _  to him and there wasn’t anything he was remarkably good at. Overall, at Hogwarts he was average-except when it came to quidditch. He and Cedric were easily the best players on the team and Zach never really thought of doing anything else. He spent more time making sure a team would want him once he graduated than he spent doing his homework. He got picked up pretty quickly- and while he knows eventually there’s gonna be a day where he has to retire he’d much rather not think about it.  He just wants to fly.


End file.
